


When at Night I go to Sleep

by ivyblossom



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Fluff, I'm not going to apologize for what I've done here, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, but be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22654888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyblossom/pseuds/ivyblossom
Summary: Time stops, and Crowley isn't the one who did it. He was asleep at the time, having thrown a strop and poured himself into unconsciousness to cool down. But he assumes whoever did it, either Hell or Heaven, either/or, is probably planning to execute him for his sins. And it's not as if he has anywhere else to go with the world on pause, so there isn't much he can do about it. It's a fair cop.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 45
Kudos: 152





	When at Night I go to Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Treetart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Treetart) for the thoughtful, kind, and gentle beta read. But in the end the self-indulgence before you is my fault alone, please blame only me. I am grateful that fandom is big enough to house tooth-achingly sweet things like this, along with all the other variations we can think of and create to cope with loving characters and stories the way we do. And thank you, dear reader, for your tolerance, and for being so generous and patient with a self-indulgent sop like me.

When time stops, you know it. 

Well: no. Most don’t. For _them_ , when time stops, everything stops, including their ability to exist, and their capacity to know anything at all, so of course _they_ don’t know it. They effectively wink out of existence. That was a figure of speech. I meant me.

When it happens, it’s very noticeable to those who can notice, is what I’m saying. 

I can feel it on my skin, like cling film pulled over me, over my mouth, my eyes, my fingers. It feels like I’m inside a vacuum bag with the air sucked out. It’s like suddenly finding yourself in aspic. It’s like the inside of your nose when you take a breath at midnight in the arctic: everything freezes up in the oddest and most disconcerting way. It’s uncomfortable, is what I’m saying. It doesn’t stop me, generally, as far as I’m aware, at least, it’s never stopped me, but I can feel it trying. Sticky fingers trying to hold me still.

I’m used to being prepared for it when it happens, because every time I’ve felt it, it’s been me doing it. It’s a confirmation of success, really, the vacuum in the absence of time. I know I’ve managed it when it grabs at my skin like a glue trap.

But it wasn’t me this time. I didn’t do this, but there it is: the weird, cold pull of timelessness.

Not an excellent moment for it, frankly. Not great. I was in the middle of something. Well: I was in the middle of a grand sulk, if I’m honest. An epic strop.

It was one more argument about the possibility of forgiveness for a demon who didn’t intend to disobey and fall. (Spoiler: it’s nil. Trust me on this, it’s nil, Aziraphale. It was made exceptionally clear to us at the time: I was there, you were not, I know this. I don’t like it any more than you do, but arguing about it doesn’t change the truth. I’m never ever going to be forgiven. Your prayers are earnest and sincere, I know that, and I appreciate the effort and the affection that goes into them, truly I do, but there are no ears willing to hear them when it comes those of us of the lapsarian persuasion, any demon can confirm this. Not going to happen.) And, in this case, we argued about the value of sustaining any amount of hope for such a fantastically impossible thing, for me, for him. We’ve had this argument before. Obviously.

I had taken my snit to bed and planned to sleep well into the next decade. 

Well: into next week, maybe. 

Alright: until the morning. Until about 10ish. 

That was the plan. I’d have cooled off by then, and Aziraphale would be there in the light of the mid-morning, looking contrite and lovely and sad, and he’d wish me good morning, and tell me he’d missed me, and he didn’t mean to upset me, and he’d seat himself primly on the bed just above my knees wringing his hands until I unwound myself and invited him in. He would gloriously blanket me with his warmth and weight, and he would nuzzle me gently, smelling so good as he always does, and tell me he’s sorry against the skin of my neck. And I would cling to him like a limpet, like a leech draining him of blood, like a cold-blooded thing grateful and needy for his warmth. And those words would be the salvation I want, the only one I can have and can accept. When he kissed me, it would make up for what I’ve lost. At least in that beautiful, perfect moment, it would make up for it.

Is the sulk about the beauty of the reconciliation, really? Is the fight only an excuse to indulge in the kiss? It might well be. We can both be so dramatic at times, and I can’t say the result isn’t glorious. I look forward to it, always.

But my sleep, and my bout of Mood, and my temporary return to prelapsarian joy in Azidaphale’s arms in the morning, have been rudely interrupted, because bloody time just bloody stopped. And I didn’t stop it. Which means someone else did. Obviously. Who? And why?

“Aziraphale!”

Well, I know it wasn’t him, but I need him. When the universe seizes like this, you want a companion: you want company. He’ll feel the weird signature of it too, he can help me figure out who it might be, stopping time on us. Doesn’t feel like my side. Could be his. Would have to be his, really, if it’s not mine, can’t really be any other side, can it. It’s only the two sides in this bubble of physics. Well, along Aziraphale and me. And the humans, but they can’t stop time. Unless something’s radically changed since I last looked into it. Seems unlikely.

The other thing about timelessness: it’s quiet. Quieter than you can imagine, there’s literally no way for non-occult sound to even manifest without time. It’s got nothing to go through, nothing to organize it. No ticking clocks, no gusts of wind, no arguing birds or thunking pipes as the heating kicks in. It’s a weird quiet, like you’ve got aspic stuck in your ears. Not something I recommend trying, by the way.

He’s usually nearby when I’m having a sulk. He feels badly for sending me into one. To be entirely fair, it’s not just a sulk, it’s a rest. It’s not easy to carry the weight of damnation all the time, relentlessly. Sometimes I need the calm and peace of oblivion. The only time I can stop being fallen, stop being a regretful demon, is when I drift into unconsciousness. It’s a respite.

He’s got an armchair in the corner of his little bedroom where he sits, reads, and waits for me to wake up. Honestly, that’s why my Moods only last a night or so lately. I know he’s there, and I know he’ll wait as long as I need him to. There’s a little table next to his armchair with a stack of books on it, ones he’s been meaning to get to. He’s prepared for the wait at this point. I suppose I’ve pulled this trick one too many times.

The kiss at the end of it really is that good. 

He couldn’t have failed to notice time stopping. It’s a bit itchy, you can’t not notice. (Well: I can’t. He can’t. The rest of creation can’t help but not notice.) He’ll be wondering about it, like me. He’ll think it was me doing it, maybe to return to some salient point in our last argument, a rewind button to help me express my _esprit d’escalier_ , I’ve just come up with a better, wittier, more withering counter-argument, something like that. I’m the one who would stop time as a rhetorical flourish. But it wasn’t me. Can he tell? Surely he can. It doesn’t feel like me. There’s something...different in it. Something warm, big, weird. Familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it.

_Who are you?_

“Aziraphale?”

Well. This is new. He’s not in his armchair. He’s in bed with me, facing away from me, book propped up on the pillow, his little reading lamp on low. He’s lying in bed beside me, under the bedclothes, even, not an arm’s length away, reading while I sleep the night away, oblivious. Staying close. That’s new, isn’t it? Must be. Maybe it’s not. Maybe I just never knew he did that.

Aziraphale doesn’t sleep, and he almost never gets into the extremely comfortable bed he’s got for himself, so that leaves two options: he felt lonely after our argument, so he got into bed with me because he wanted to be with me even though I wasn’t being a very active or engaged companion, or, and this is both far more poignant and far more likely: in a completely characteristic and spectacular misunderstanding of how sleep works, Aziraphale worried that I’d be lonely in the midst of my deeply maudlin, overdramatic, unconscious strop, and he decided to join me in the hopes of making me feel less abandoned by everything I’ve ever loved.

“Aziraphale.” I can’t keep the emotion out of my voice anymore. I’m finished with my sulk, even though it looks nowhere near close to dawn.

He doesn’t move.

His body isn’t warm against my hand. The skin on the back of his neck is cold and hard against my mouth, flat and unyielding, like metal or stone. His hair is fine, curled pins of glass that poke into my cheek. Every piece of him is unmovable, solid, sharp, and still. 

See, more evidence that it wasn’t me. When I stop time, I keep Aziraphale free. Because I need him. I wouldn’t contain him like this. I wouldn’t wink him out of existence. Not ever.

Without him, there is no warmth anywhere in this world. There’s no point.

There’s a light under the door of the toilet. Has it been on all this time? I don’t think so. I think it just came on.

Someone’s here. For me.

I’ve always expected this moment to come, if I’m honest. From the start. It was only a matter of time before hell’s administrators sniffed out my lukewarm acceptance of the overall mission statement. This moment was always inevitable.

What kills me is that they aren’t even going to let me say goodbye. Or _I’m sorry_. Or _I didn’t mean what I said_. Or _thank you_. Or _stop making that face, it was worth it and you know it_. Nothing. There will just be a moment when I’m there with him, asleep next to him, and then in the next moment, when I’ll be inexplicably gone. Vanished from existence entirely. There really is no more time for me.

They’re going to execute me in Aziraphale’s loo, and he won’t ever know exactly what happened. He’ll call my name, he’ll turn and see that I’m no longer in bed with him. He’ll panic, and he’ll see the dark, waxy patch on the tile floor in the loo and know what it is. He’ll sense that it’s what’s left of me. That I’m done, I’m gone forever. And that will be it. It’s the ending he’s always feared for me, and here it is.

He will wonder if I got my hands on holy water and did it to myself. I know he will. He will blame himself. He will blame me. It will make sense. There will be no evidence of struggle, or of any other hands. Maybe they’ll even leave evidence to point to my suicide, who knows. Maybe they were watching our argument, picked their moment carefully to maximize the pain. If they understood humanity better, if they had even a spark of human creativity, they might be tempted to forge a note.

You see, Aziraphale? What good did all those earnest prayers do? I adore you for them, you have my heart for them, but what good were they?

The last thing I said to him was not kind. It should have been. It should have been _I love you_. I should have given him something to hold on to instead of a surly rebuke that will surely ring in his ears for the rest of time. Never fall in love with a demon: we won’t do anything but cause you pain.

Locked in aspic, preserved in the glass of timelessness, I can’t even touch him again. Ever again.

Hell may not be creative, but it is cruel, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The door to the loo swings open, and light pours into Aziraphale’s little bedroom, light cut into a perfect wedge against the braided rug on the floor. There is no time at all now. It’s all used up.

_Aziraphale. I’m sorry. God be with you. Don’t make that face. Be well. Be happy. Enjoy the rest of it for me, will you? Pip pip._

The floor against my feet is stiff and cold without time. Stuff my feet into my slippers before realizing what a pointless exercise that is, now, at the end. _At least he expired in his wooly slippers._ Habit: look how domestic I’ve become. How I’ve taken it all for granted. How I’ve come to take on an identity and a life I wasn’t owed and didn’t deserve. Slippers! I am made of regret now. It’s only a few steps to the loo. Might as well get this over with. He’s not even here anymore for me to cling on to.

Unexpected: the sink is on fire. The taps, the edges of the porcelain, they’re burning in blue and purple, fire that licks up along the walls and against the edges of Aziraphale’s baroque mirror. It curls around his beautiful reclaimed-ivory toothbrush. 

Panic: fire. Fire! There’s no one to help. There’s no blues and twos on the way, not ever, the bookshop will burn down again and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It will break his heart: he’ll lose me and his books at the same time, his beautiful bed that he couldn’t care less about, his cardigans and his gloves. And our conversations, our dinners, our shared miracles. My hand against his lower back: all gone. Impulse: put the fire out! Throw a towel over it (no, bad idea, then the towel will burst into flame); turn the water on; would that work? Wash it away? 

How does a sink come to be burning in the first place? 

Oh: it’s not burning. Of course it’s not. There’s nothing to burn in the first place, and the porcelain isn’t turning black. This isn’t fire at all. This is the Almighty. It’s a divine text message. She’s reached into Her old bag of communication tricks. Ah. Of course. This is a message for me. From, of all people, the Lord Herself. It’s not even The Metatron, She’s taken to slumming it in this case. She stopped the world to give me a slap. To knock me off the face of Her creation. I’m sort of honoured, if I’m honest. Terrified, but honoured.

I didn’t imagine She’d ever think of me again.

It’s certainly unexpected. I thought I was Hell’s problem now. I didn’t know She took it upon Herself to finish any of us off with Her bare hands, as it were, but here we are. Demon facing Divine Unquenchable Flame.

It’s been a long time, a very long time indeed, but I know what to do, and I can’t not do it: I pull off my slippers and throw them into the dim room behind me. The floor under my feet is holy in Her presence, and it hurts, more than I imagined it would. Unsurprisingly, it burns. But to put the old leather sole of a slipper between me and holy ground is disrespectful. In spite of my station and my sins, I have no desire to be disrespectful, particularly not here at the end of it all. 

The pain feels right. Almost cleansing, if I dare even think it. I want to feel something before I go, and if it can’t be Aziraphale, it might as well be this. The tile is hard and hot against my knees when I finally get into the appropriate position. My final resting place: unforgivable repentant, supplicating, in pain.

I don’t hear Her in the normal way, with my corporeal ears, but I feel Her voice, or see it, almost. It’s not traveling through space and time, it’s writing meaning onto my bones. I can feel the tone of Her message through my teeth. There is nothing in the world more intimate and more terrifying than being spoken to directly by The Almighty. She says: _Crowley_.

A flash of memories appear before my eyes: the Lake of Fire coming at me too fast, the terrifying moment when everything angelic about me was burned away. The agony of it, the shock, the despair: It hurts. I won’t lie to you, it brings tears to my eyes even now. A lot of tears. This is the worst moment of my life, the hardest thing I’ve ever faced. I almost (almost) wish I’d died there.

She shows me something: a view, somehow, of the marrow in my bones, the deepest core of me, a sliver of something. Ah: She protected a little piece of my angelic form from the brimstone. She left a bit of angel in this demon, undetectable, hidden away, tucked in under the scales and the smoke, hidden on another plane of existence. On purpose. That’s what She wants me to know. She made sure I wasn’t completely hacked to bits that day, for some reason.

Well. That explains a lot.

But why? Why would You do something so horrible to me?

Am I meant to be grateful? I am meant to thank You? For preserving some piece of me as I was, my desire to please You, to love and be loved, my compassion for Your creation, my sense of shame, of trust, my memories of joy, while enduring Your endless, debilitating, soul-destroying punishment? It’s worse this way, so much worse. Worse even than I already thought it was. It was never going to be easy for me, not for a moment. You made sure of it.

Why? Did You mean to make sure I wouldn’t ever feel that I belonged anywhere? That I would regret everything I was required to think, say, and do, that I would feel the weight and pain of my loss so keenly every moment for thousands of years? What did I do to deserve this particularly cruel punishment, pray tell?

Was it my questions? Is this what it means to not quite mean to fall? Was I only halfway damned, in some bizarre way? I don’t understand.

There are no mistakes in Your universe. Except that You made yourself a whole world out of contents of the wonky drawer, for some reason. Including, as it turns out, me. A demon with the conscience of an angel condemned to hell? The Great Plan, I suppose? No matter how much it was going to hurt? Or is this the Ineffable Plan? Was that the whole point, then? Just to torture me?

I am flayed open, vulnerable, and helpless. I am angry, and I am terrified. This is unfair. It has always been unfair.

When God is cruel, She can destroy a whole people, men, women, children, animals, the Kraken, everything that ever was. She can make you burn in agony for an eternity. But when She chooses to comfort you, it feels like a realm of joy you couldn’t imagine could ever exist. She does this for me now through him: She comforts me with the smell of Aziraphale’s hair, with the sound of his breathing. She comforts me with the feeling of being next to Aziraphale, knowing that any moment now he’s going to look over at me with his warm eyes and smile, and love me with his whole heart. Love, joy, hope. Faith.

Faith?

You pushed me out of heaven. Because I wouldn’t have liked it there? Because I would have objected? Because I would have insisted it become something better than it is. I was a thumb on the scale, was I? Well.

Sure. I’m not a big fan of automated telephone voice prompt systems, and that’s what heaven appears to have become in my absence. It was going that way even before I left. At Your command, I presume? Your grand design? Your team upstairs is worse than your team downstairs at this point. Or at least they’re roughly even, morally. Was that The Great Plan? I helped Eve and Adam understand good and evil, and then you blurred the lines and changed the goal posts? At the extreme ends, there’s no difference at all between the hosts of Good and Evil, is that what they were meant to find out? 

Was that what I was meant to find out? Not my favourite plot twist, I have to tell you.

More of Her ideas, burning new pathways in my brain: She gave me something else, something new. She found a way for us, Her creations, to create something else, maybe something better. A third way. You gave us the freedom to figure it out, the tools to do so. A partner in crime. A partner in creating something completely novel, unique, something unexpected. Something neither side could begin to conceive on their own.

Imagine the feeling of being consumed by the warm, unexpected, watery sensation of heavenly light poured into you, on to you, through you, from a smiling, burning sink. It heals all your wounds. It moisturizes your skin and adjusts your hormonal balance. It freshens your breath, cleans your toenails, and manicures your colon. It’s like an amphetamine and a mood stabilizer with a fistful of candy floss. It scrubs the stains out of your conscience and your soul. Somehow it turns the volume down on the agony in your heart, the pounding of grief and loss in your head. It is the sensation of love on a level that is, I hate to say it, ineffable. 

What just happened to me?

There’s water on the floor. Whatever that was wasn’t just a spiritual experience. I am soaked, and my skin is hot and tingling. I have been washed raw. What is this? Have I just had a Holy Bath? Have I just been– 

No. No, I’m not even going to _think_ it. Even considering the question seems likely to be some kind of raging sin, some kind of question that’ll get me sent back down to a level of Hell I didn’t know existed. A bath in molten hydrogen, or something. Burn off the last bit of goodness in me.

I can feel Her thoughts. I think they might destroy me all over again. She likes questions. She likes my questions. Who am I to argue with the Almighty, but unholy Hell, do I ever have evidence to the contrary, Your Honour. A demon bathing in holy water: She’s amused by it. She loves it. 

It wasn’t my idea. That was Aziraphale’s idea, Or Agnes Nutter’s, the corporation-swapping thing. He was so pleased when he worked it out, _choose your faces wisely_ and all that. He wanted to show me how much he’s committed to _our side_. He wanted to protect me. He was looking forward to me swooping into the deepest darkest pit of Hell where he assumed they’d plunge me, because he gets a special little thrill when I rescue him. I’d have worn my best leather trousers for that. Swoop in with a soundtrack, be heroic and dashing. All for the look on his face.

Now imagine a sink on fire grinning at you, waiting for you to get it.

That’s what it’s like with the Almighty, always. Always grinning at you right when you’re so angry and happy and frightened and confused all at the same time. When you’re on your knees on the tile floor of Aziraphale’s loo, drenched in water, panting in fear, no longer in pain, wondering what in Heaven’s very name is going on right now.

There is a gap in my understanding at this point, I have no idea what happened next. I’m tripping over my slippers heading back towards the bed all of a sudden, dry as a bone. What happened? When did I get up off of the tile? What happened to the burning sink? I have no idea. It feels as though time has passed; no: the absence of time has passed. It makes no sense, is what I’m saying. My face feels a little windburnt. My hair is a mess. There’s something on my cheek that feels like the memory of a kiss, and my hands are warm as if they’ve been held. Something definitely happened. I just can’t tell you what it was.

Something’s changed. Something’s radically different, earth-shatteringly different, what is it?

Colour. For a start.

I’d forgotten about colour. I hadn’t known that colour had been taken from me along with God’s Grace, the reporting line, and the title, but I can see now it was. Was that only me? Can the others see colour like this?

I mean, I knew colour was a thing, I could always see colour, so I’d thought, but I’d forgotten the incredible scope of it, the variations. It had been so muted for me, reduced, all this time. Was it the reptilian eyes, did they stunt my senses? Or was it the fall? Or the burning sulphur?

Does everyone else see things in this many shades of blue and yellow and green? The colour of his hair is more subtle than I’d realised: it’s a cool blond, not a cold white. The tone of his skin is warmer than I thought it was too, more in line with how he feels when you touch him: warm, soft, comforting, lovely. The quilt on the bed is made from Aziraphale’s tartan: I thought it was just brown and tan, but I can see the pink in it now, a beautiful rose in the circle of low light from his little reading lamp. That little bit of light around him is just bursting with colour. Even in the unmoving dark I can see colour: dark blues, purples, the sharp shock of still and distant stars through the window. Even black looks deeper, more clear and more dense, more than just an absence. It’s all glorious.

And then there’s this: this gift, it’s so strong it rattles my tonsils, tugs on my hair and pricks the middle of my back. It’s a feeling, a connection: it’s a reality so vivid I can almost see it, like heat radiating off of him, off of me. It’s real and it’s there, inarguable, like a physical presence, an obvious thing like light, or smoke, or music playing. It’s been so long, I’d forgotten this is what it would be like to sense it. It’s love so loud, so bright, so intense around me I may never manage to fall asleep again. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Back in the early days before time began I’d seen it grander, sure: more powerful, more diffuse, but never so sharp and so specific. So clear. So tailored to its individual, specific recipients and generators. It’s contrapuntal polyphony between the two of us. It’s ancient. It’s mine, and his. We’ve been in this weird harmony for a long time.

Aziraphale’s bedclothes are hovering in place as if I were still under them, as if I’d never moved. They’re waiting there for me to slide back in, to slot myself back into space and time. Because it will go on after this. With colour, with all of it. The scales have fallen from my eyes, haven’t they. He’ll have to get used to that. I wonder if he’ll miss my eyes. I wonder if he’ll like the original ones, the healed ones, as much. I curl back up in bed, return to the moment before the end of everything, and take a breath.

Time will start up again at some point. And what then? I didn’t expect to still be alive at this point. It will be warm again. He’ll be here with me again, whole and untroubled. I will shift towards him, and he will start. He’ll wonder if he woke me. The natural end of my sulk is still hours away. The last time we spoke, I was very deep in it, so he’ll be worried about whether I’m going to lash out at him for getting into bed with me, or for waking him, or for not shutting up and leaving me the hell alone as I so graciously and politely requested when I was last conscious, or whether I’m going to dive back into our stupid, endless, utterly pointless argument. He’ll freeze and wait, and listen. And in that moment, the moment when I start to reach for him, when I lean over to bury my face in the back of his neck and try to work out what to say to him now that his prayers have been answered, he’ll sense that something’s changed. He’ll know.

I expect it will be by smell. He’s more sensitive to smell than I think he even knows. But he’ll sense that I’m not quite the same as I was a moment before. He’ll smell Her on me. He’ll smell the absence of brimstone. He’ll smell me healed, forgiven. He knows the scent of salvation: it smells like frankincense, it’s hard to miss.

And I’m pretty certain he won’t believe it. I don’t, not yet, not really, and I was there.

For a moment he’ll think someone from his Head Office came in the night and swapped me for an angel to catch him out. Before he puts his book down and turns to face me, he’ll fear that instead of me, he’ll find Gabriel in bed beside him, looking smug, or Sandalphon. Or Uriel. For a half-second, seeing that it’s still me, he’ll wonder whether I’m a replica, a fraud Crowley, here to punish him for his poor choices. He’ll probably continue to fear that while he takes my face in his hands and looks into my healed eyes, my angelic eyes, my eyes that are no longer reptilian, and he will be afraid. He will be deeply, horribly afraid for what he fears has happened to me. 

I don’t know what he’ll do next. He might cry. He might scream. He might leap out of bed and conjure light, flood the room with sunlight and stare at me from behind his armchair. He might pat me down, haul out my wings for inspection, investigate my skin, look for marks, sigils, signs of trickery and treachery. But whatever he does first, he’ll realise quickly enough that no angel or demon in Heaven or Hell has the creativity to pull off what he fears they might have. Aziraphale is quicker than he looks, and he knows the tell-tale and very notable signs of redemption. He asked for this without believing it was possible. He’s been begging for it for ages. He’ll know what happened.

He’ll taste me to see if I’ve become mortal (I haven’t). He’ll stroke my arm, or my hair, and ask me if I’m alright. He’ll want to know how it happened. I don’t know what I’ll tell him, I hardly know myself.

Or, maybe he won’t notice as quickly as that. Maybe he’ll hear me stir and put his book on the bedside table, switch the light out, and turn towards me. Maybe he’ll cradle me in his arms first, the way I so love him to, maybe he’ll wrap himself around me and whisper, _I’m so sorry I hurt you_ , the way he always does after I retreat into a big snit. We’d be in the dark then, maybe he won’t see the signs. I could keep my eyes shut. Maybe he won’t notice the change in me until he kisses me.

Maybe he already knows: maybe that’s why he’s in bed with me in the first place. Maybe he’s been waiting. Maybe The Almighty took him into the sanctified and consecrated loo first, praised him for saving the soul of a demon, for saving the world from God’s Own Great Plan, lavished him with angelic awards and accolades, offered to promote him. Make Gabriel report to him for a while. (I wonder which of them would hate that more?) Maybe She’s made him impervious to hellfire, just like I pretended he was. She wouldn’t give me immunity to holy water and consecrated ground while not protecting him from the Lake of Fire, would She? Surely not. Maybe She gave him just a little bit of damnation the way She gave me a little bit of grace: enough to keep us just as we are, but shatter the illusions of complicity. Give us just enough hellfire and sanctification to break the shackles of our head offices, to formally create us as our own establishment. Enough to make us different from the rest, safe from their retribution, independent. More of earth than of heaven or hell. As we are. More new than old. One can only hope. Hope, it appears, has some value after all.

I suppose we all get it wrong some of the time, even me.

The stickiness of time standing still lets me go all of a sudden, as if an old betamax tape that was stuck and stalled in the player suddenly started up again without warning. There’s sound again: wind against the roof, the faint drone of the refrigerator clicking on downstairs, the hum of a bus drifting past outside. And Aziraphale’s body heat is here against me again, steady and certain, unwavering. I can hear him breathing, and his voice is buried behind it like a watermark: it’s the most comforting and reassuring sound in all the world. He turns a page; and in a way, I suppose, so do I.

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't grow up with Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921, not the other one)'s Christmas opera, _Hänsel und Gretel_ playing on vinyl every Christmas like I did, you may not recognize this title. "When at Night I go to Sleep" is the English translation of the song _Abendsegen_. For reference, [you can hear it here in German with English subtitles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96pW-o2tzjA).


End file.
